Andrea Smith is celebrating.
Her second CD Sweet Embrace will be complete next week and she has a busy summer lined up, performing at the Blues Fest downtown and at the Music for the Mountain fund-raiser with headliners Blue Rodeo.
She also continues to play with her group Quench regularly at the Queen's. The CD will be launched on July 15 at the German Cultural Club on Caledonia Ave. starting at 7 p.m. The show is a joint fund-raiser for Smith -- to raise money to cover the costs of producing the CD -- and the Nanaimo Conservatory of Music, which has recently moved into a new space downtown. Smith has been a student for the past two years at Malaspina's jazz program, studying guitar and voice. She said doing both school and recording her CD for the past year has been a struggle and her friend, Daybreak Rotary member Rod Mont, decided to help throw the July 15 benefit.
"I had to keep borrowing money to keep working on the CD and borrowing money to go to school and he (Mont) watched my financial struggles," Smith said. "So we organized this summer night of music."
"We (Rotary) like to support local students," Mont said. "We thought this would be something that would be fun for the club to get involved with. We thought this would be good, rather than everything always being towards the athletic side of things . . . . it's nice to support the arts community as well."
The Pat Coleman Quartet will also play at the benefit.
Before doing music, Smith worked with horses in the Interior on guiding expeditions. While she did this, music was always part of her life- she started with piano and guitar at five and played in a rock band in her 20s. After a horse fell on her, Smith attended massage therapy school in Ontario, but when the work became hard on her hands, affecting her guitar playing, she made a choice to return to school and do music full-time.
"I couldn't not do it (music)," she said. "I thought this seems to be the natural next step for me to take. I wanted to improve my skills as a musician and a songwriter."
Sweet Embrace has been a long time in the making. Smith has been writing songs for about 15 years and she spent about a year actually recording the CD on and off. Many well known local musicians appear on the album including Pat Steward on drums, David Gogo and more. The CD is a mix of jazz, blues, country, pop and rock- which meld together, Smith said.
"The whole process has been such an amazing educational journey for me and going to school at the same time, kind of went hand in hand as my own skills improved, so were the people I was wanting to have play. I was in the hands of absolute professionals," she said. "It just sounds so amazing."
Sweet Embrace will be available at Tina's Diner, and on the website at www.RootCellarRecords.ca. Tickets for the July 15 show will be available at the Quilted Duck, Rutherford Mall, Bernard Callebaut, Falconcer Books, Woodgrove Mall, Nanaimo Conservatory of Music and from Rotary Daybreak members at 751-1818.